by Mike Godsey
In normal years the bulk of the strong wind at the kite and windsurf sites in the Los Barriles and La Ventana areas comes from high pressure in the Great Basin area of the USA. However, the 2019-2020 winter season has seen lots of days when an unusually robust North Pacific High (NPH) has sent strong NNW winds down the Sea of Cortez.
The NNW angle of this NPH wind is not ideal for reliable wind at the beach but if there is good inland valley heating this wind does curve into the beaches.
But sometimes this season both the North Pacific High and the high pressure in the Great Basin have either been absent or too far away to help the Baja Sur winds.
Typically when this happens and we have blue skies we see kiteable mid to upper-teens winds from the local sea breeze as the inland valleys heat. These winds usually are strongest in the Rasta Beach area north of El Sargento and weaker for the La Ventana beaches and weaker yet for Los Barriles.
But there is another wind machine in our area that can ally with the local sea breezes to brings upper-teens to about 20 winds to the area. And that is the thermal trough just south of Baja’s East Cape.
Let’s look at today, February 21, 2020 as an example of this pattern.